Nicaragua's Other Revolution: Religious Faith and Political Struggle

By Abigail Perkiss and Laura Nuzzi O'Shaughnessy

The 1979 rebellion in Nicaragua was the first in modern Latin America to be carried out with the active participation and support of Christians. Like all revolutions, the Nicaraguan Revolution has provoked controversy and hostility, and the Christian presence has been a focal point in the debate. In this work Michael Dodson and Laura Nuzzi O'Shaughnessy offer a detailed study of the religious sources of the revolution set against the backgound of the revolutionary traditions of the United States.

Nicaragua's Other Revolution places the experience of the Nicaraguan Revolution in a historical framework that extends back to the Protestant Reformation and in an institutional framework that encompasses the whole of Nicaraguan politics. Examining the broad process of religious change, this work explores how that process interacted with the political struggles that culminated in the revolution. Dodson and O'Shaughnessy conclude that the religious values and attitudes arising out of postconciliar renewal in the church contributed powerfully to demands for revolutionary change in Nicaragua.

In England and America the Protestant Reformation gave a tremendous boost to demands for democratic changes in society and politics. This work shows that something similar happened in Catholic Central America in the post-Medellin period. Changes in religious thought and action were part of, and served to reinforce and stimulate, a wider movement for social and political change. Without denying the importance of Marxism, the authors demonstrate that other important influences are at work there.

Originally published in 1990.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Release date: Nov 9, 2000
• ISBN: 9780807861066

Abigail Perkiss

Abigail Perkiss is associate professor of history at Kean University.

Book preview

Preface

An impressive outpouring of new books has accompanied the explosion of journalistic and scholarly interest in Central America during the 1980s. This attention followed the initiatives of U.S. foreign policy, which abruptly defined Central America as being of vital importance to the security and well-being of the United States. At the same time that Central America was becoming a hot spot, there was a surge of interest in the enduring vitality of world religions and their capacity to shape political life. The present book developed at just this point where religious renewal and political change intersect.

For a number of years the authors had done research and teaching focused on revolutions in Latin America. In the late 1970s we developed a strong interest in the popular political struggles that were emerging in Central America. We took particular interest in the events of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua because the Christian churches appeared to play a prominent role in them. We had been studying the Catholic church for nearly two decades. Over that span of time we witnessed dramatic changes in the habits and attitudes of Latin American Christians, and in the social thought and institutional structures of the Roman Catholic church. Something on the order of a religious revolution took place in postconciliar Latin America, with varied but important repercussions all across the continent. We decided to examine the role played by religious change in the political revolution that swept Nicaragua during the late 1970s.

From its inception the Sandinista Revolution generated deep concern and growing controversy in the United States. Because of the importance given to it within the foreign policy agenda of the Reagan administration, Nicaragua stayed in the headlines year after year during the 1980s—and that fact no doubt contributed to the scholarly attention that was so suddenly thrust upon this hitherto neglected country. In our opinion the scholarly attention, at least, has not been misplaced. There is a great deal to be learned from the struggles of small, dependent countries such as Nicaragua to create more equitable societies and more popular forms of politics. Not the least important of those lessons is the latent capacity of religious systems to generate demands for societal justice and to invigorate popular efforts aimed at achieving that justice.

Popular struggle of this kind is inherently controversial. We have been mindful of the deeply partisan character of the subject while writing this book. Our aim has been to examine issues raised by the interaction of religion and politics within the Nicaraguan Revolution as rigorously as possible, while losing neither the sense of passion and drama that attends matters so important in the lives of a people, nor our own objectivity. The reader will be the best judge of our success.

The ideas for this book first began to take shape during the spring of 1983. At that time Michael Dodson used a sabbatical leave to begin a study of religious life at the grass roots in Nicaragua. His efforts were greatly facilitated by contact with a research team based at the Consejo Superior Universitaria Centroamericana (CSUCA) in San José, Costa Rica, who were then engaged in an ambitious empirical study of popular religiosity in Central America. The officials of CSUCA made him feel welcome, and stimulating discussions with Andrés Opazo, Rosa María Pochet, and Jorge Cáceres over a period of several years were invaluable. At about the same time (1981) Laura O’Shaughnessy visited Central America as part of a lay mission team jointly sponsored by the New York State Council of Churches and Mutuality in Mission, a program then affiliated with Cornell University. These travels in Central America at a time of intense religious ferment and political activity had a lasting impact on both authors.

We began our collaboration during that spring of 1983, agreeing to prepare a chapter on the role of the churches in the Nicaraguan Revolution for an edited volume. That chapter was published under the title Religion and Politics in Thomas W. Walker’s Nicaragua: The First Five Years; Chapters 8 and 9 in the present work draw on that material. Chapter 7 draws on material published in Walker’s earlier book, Nicaragua in Revolution, which Michael Dodson coauthored with T. S. Montgomery, while portions of Chapter 5 are based upon Laura Nuzzi O’Shaughnessy’s previously published monograph, The Church and Revolution in Nicaragua. A Fulbright senior lectureship in the United Kingdom from January through April 1985 enabled Michael Dodson to pursue his studies of the English revolution. Special thanks go to John McClelland for his generous friendship; he arranged the terms of the lectureship at the University of Nottingham so as to allow Dodson ample time for research and writing. First drafts of Chapters 2 and 3 were produced there.

Michael Dodson also benefited from a fellowship at the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship of Calvin College, which he held during the 1986–87 academic year. Affiliation with the Calvin Center brought the authors into association with creative scholars whose advice and critical reading of several chapters helped to sharpen the manuscript. Bill Cook, Lance Grahn, Sidney Rooy, Gordon Spykman, and John Stam exemplified a commitment to the truth and a love for Central America that continue to inspire us. Their friendship and that of their wives greatly enriched a stimulating and challenging year. Affiliation with the Calvin Center made it possible for both authors to travel extensively in Central America during the first two months of 1987. Michael Dodson wishes to express his gratitude to Texas Christian University (TCU) for providing the leave time that made the above periods of research possible. Laura O’Shaughnessy would like to thank Thomas Holladay, then director of the Latin American Studies program at Cornell University, for facilitating her stay as a visiting fellow in the spring of 1985. Special thanks go to St. Lawrence University for its initial research support and especially to Dean G. Andrew Rembert for encouraging her to continue research for the book by designing her job as associate dean in such a way as to permit continued work in the field.

It should be noted that the field research for this book was completed in January 1988 with the reaffirmation of the Esquipulas Accords in San José, Costa Rica. Since that date there have been important new developments within the Nicaraguan Revolution and in the larger international environment that impinges upon it. Most important in this regard has been the effort of the Sandinista government to achieve a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement of the Contra war. These recent events, however, lie outside the purview of this study.

Numerous friends and colleagues have influenced the book in subtle but important ways. On the faculty of St. Lawrence University, Rick Guarasci, Ahmed Samatar, William Hunt, University Librarian Richard Kuhta, and University Chaplain Dr. Theodore Linn were especially helpful to Laura O’Shaughnessy, as were Stuart Voss and Bill Culver of SUNY Plattsburgh. Dennis Gilbert, T. S. Montgomery, Rose Spalding, and Tom Walker are valued friends of both authors who always seemed able to bring a fresh perspective to interests we shared. Over a period of many years Michael Dodson’s colleagues at TCU, Don Jackson and Charles Lockhart, have consistently offered the sort of support and genuine friendship that sustain one’s work as well as one’s spirit. Dan Levine, Meg Crahan, Tom Bruneau, Brian Smith, and Scott Mainwaring are colleagues who have exemplified high-quality scholarship on the Latin American church. Bud Kenworthy has been a uniquely stimulating intellectual influence. His work always displays penetrating insights and is always presented in clear and graceful prose. He sets a standard to which we aspire, even though we fall short. From beginning to end our work benefited from the assistance of the Maryknoll Sisters, whose dedication to the poor of Central America is widely known and justly admired.

Both authors were graduate students in political science at Indiana University. There we relied in numerous ways on the wise and humane guidance of our mentor Alfred Diamant. We also accrued important intellectual debts and developed lasting friendships with Bernie Morris and Dick Stryker. The encouragement given us by the late James Scobie was a great boost during the early years of our careers. These teachers took the hard edge off graduate study while providing role models for what we wished one day to become.

We made more than a dozen research trips to Nicaragua between 1982 and 1988, in the course of which we accumulated debts to hundreds of Nicaraguans. These Nicas, who came from all walks and stations of life, always received us graciously, sharing the story of their struggle and the vision of their hope. Very often we could see they were busy with more important tasks, but they took time for us anyway. This contact with a suffering but generous people was the single most valuable aspect of five years of research and writing. Among the many who helped us, we would like especially to acknowledge and thank Ricardo and Milagros Chavarría and their parents, who provided warm hospitality on more than one occasion, Gustavo Parajón, Jorge Samper, Sixto Ulloa, and Roger Zavala.

David Perry of the University of North Carolina Press has been a sympathetic and helpful editor. His enthusiasm for our project and his patience and encouragement as we labored through final drafts have been crucial to its success. Thanks are owed to Carmelita Shepelwich, who typed the first draft of the entire manuscript, and to Jim Riddlesperger and Carlos Miranda, who not only maintained their optimism in the face of successive hurdles, but actually solved the computer problems that enabled us to complete the book within sight of our deadline. Our spouses and children know better than we what costs a project of this duration can exact on family life. To Annette and Tom we acknowledge the importance of your unselfish support. To Kelly and Eric, Nancy and Ellen Clelia we raise the hope that your generation will learn to live in peace with Nicaragua.

Part One: Religion and Modern Democratic Revolutions

Chapter One: The Nicaraguan Revolution and Its Antecedents

The Nicaraguan Revolution was the first popular political rebellion in modern Latin America to be carried out with the active participation and support of the Christian churches. From the late 1960s onward a vital nucleus of Catholics and Protestants found that their religious faith offered strong motives to join the cause of popular insurrection. These religiously motivated participants in the struggle against the Somoza dictatorship came from all walks of life and all sectors of society, and during a crucial period of Nicaraguan history their aspirations coincided with the goals of more secular actors in Nicaragua’s political drama. The result was an unprecedented fusion of the religious and the profane in the making of a Latin American revolution.

In this respect the Nicaraguan Revolution stands apart from the other two major Latin American revolutions, those of Mexico and Cuba. The Mexican Revolution was militantly anticlerical because the church was seen by revolutionary groups as one of the most reactionary elements in society. The Catholic church had been closely allied to the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1877–1910), which fell to the revolutionary movement, and it bitterly resisted the general thrust of the revolution. As a result, the Mexican constitution of 1917 dealt harshly with the church, abolishing its right to own property, reducing its control over education, denying political rights to the clergy, and giving the state legal jurisdiction over the church.

In Cuba the Catholic church played no significant role in the armed struggle that overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista (1934–44, 1952–58), preferring to stand aside from the conflict, while occasionally criticizing both sides. However, when Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement defeated Batista and set Cuba on the path of Marxist revolution, the church moved quickly, although ineffectively, into militant opposition. Within a few years, and particularly after the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961, in which some clergy were implicated, there was a mass exodus of religious personnel from Cuba, leaving an already weak church even more enfeebled. As a consequence, the church has had to struggle to establish a minimal Christian presence in Cuba’s revolutionary society and has lost its predominant position in such areas as education and the regulation of family life.

It is true that the Nicaraguan Revolution shares important features with its predecessors in Mexico and Cuba. For instance, a major objective of the Nicaraguan revolutionaries was to diminish U.S. influence in their domestic politics and limit foreign control over the nation’s resources. Indeed, all three revolutions were marked by this anti-Yankee stance, which derived in each case from a long history of U.S. intervention.¹ Similarly, in each country the revolution was driven by a powerful impulse to destroy an old order of privilege and corruption by redistributing power and wealth. Because the old regimes were closely identified with U.S. intervention, the two central features of these revolutions were mutually reinforcing. They took on the appearance of being as much revolts against the United States as they were rebellions against an antiquated oligarchy and a repressive military.²

In the case of Cuba the revolution moved decisively toward socialism and its leaders openly espoused Marxist doctrines. Sandinista leaders in Nicaragua, on the other hand, while candidly acknowledging the Cuban influence in their revolutionary movement, have insisted on the uniqueness of their revolution.³ Although some top Sandinista leaders publicly professed allegiance to Marxist principles, Daniel Ortega, shortly before being elected president of Nicaragua in November 1984, took pains to differentiate the Nicaraguan Revolution from both Cuba and Chile. We’re not imitating any country in particular, he said, but we have sought the contribution of the experiences of other countries. Ortega went on to compare the Nicaraguan Revolution to the Algerian Revolution, presumably in order to underscore its nationalist aspect. Within Latin America, he said, we would see it as being close to what the Mexican process has been.⁴ When asked whether he himself was a Marxist-Leninist, Ortega responded that the issue of Marxism was secondary. He then proceeded to argue that strict Marxist principles could hardly be applied in a country such as Nicaragua, which, in his words, is not a country where there are conditions for a class struggle.⁵

At this point it is not our intention to assess the merits of competing claims that Nicaragua is, or is not, another Cuba, although Daniel Ortega’s comment causes one to wonder just what sort of Marxist he is.⁶ Instead, we want to draw the reader’s attention to one important way in which the Nicaraguan Revolution is demonstrably different from both the Cuban and the Mexican cases. Neither the Reagan administration’s strident claims that the Sandinista Revolution is a facsimile of Cuba, nor Daniel Ortega’s claim that it most closely resembles Mexico’s experience some six decades earlier, should be allowed to obscure one essential fact: unlike Cuba and Mexico, there was striking support for revolution within Nicaragua’s religious communities. As a consequence, the Sandinistas’ attitude toward religion and the churches was quite different, being on the whole much more open and positive than was true in earlier Latin American revolutions.

At the same time, it is not surprising that the Nicaraguan Revolution provoked controversy and hostility, particularly in the United States. The Somoza dynasty was too obviously dependent on U.S. support for it to have been otherwise. Much of the frustration and rage that was vented through the popular insurrection was aimed directly at the National Guard, which was the United States’ most visible link to the repressive power system in Nicaragua. Only weeks before the National Guard collapsed under the military and political pressure brought to bear by the guerrilla army, the Carter administration tried to ease the discredited dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, from office while preserving military power in the Guards’ hands. The Carter plan provided no role for the Sandinistas in a transitional government.⁷ These machinations only added to the reservoir of suspicion with which the revolutionaries already regarded the United States and its key policy makers.

To make matters worse, the Nicaraguan Revolution took place at a time when other U.S. allies were also confronting popular rebellions. The fall of the Shah of Iran to a vehemently nationalistic and anti-U.S. revolution jolted Washington. Then, the taking of U.S. hostages in Teheran inflamed nationalist sentiment throughout the United States itself. Thus, when Nicaragua’s neighbor, El Salvador, appeared to be headed for a full-scale revolution in early 1980, a sense of crisis enveloped the American body politic. Jingoistic claims about the spread of communism in America’s own back yard suffused debates over foreign policy. Increasingly, Nicaragua came to be a focal point of American anger and frustration at the drift of events in the Third World. The Nicaraguan Revolution fell prey to bitter polemics within the American political arena. Extraordinary efforts were undertaken to prove that Nicaragua was a threat to the security of the United States.

One important consequence of these developments was that the religious presence in the Nicaraguan Revolution was first obscured, and then distorted in the mass media. Initially, in its haste to persuade the American public and U.S. allies that the Sandinistas were Marxist-Leninists loyal to Moscow, the Reagan administration repeatedly characterized the Sandinista Revolution as the work of a tiny, despotic minority who had betrayed the true democrats and were indifferent to the sentiments of the people. This view depreciated the popular character of the insurrection, and it ignored the prominent, ongoing role played by the churches and by individual Christians. But as scholars and journalists devoted increasing attention to Nicaragua—partly in response to the administration’s cries of alarm—it began to be clear that there was much more to the story. In the course of time the undeniable Christian presence in the revolution took its own prominent place in the heated debates over U.S. policy in Central America.

As U.S. policy toward Nicaragua became more and more controversial in the early 1980s, competing claims about the nature of the Sandinista Revolution were increasingly polarized. Religious groups in the United States became heavily involved in the issue, commissioning studies and publishing reports that drew extensively on the testimony of Nicaraguan Christians who defended the legitimacy of the revolution.⁸ Meanwhile, the Reagan administration, together with religious groups sympathetic to its Central American policy, organized a vigorous campaign of public diplomacy designed to show that the revolution was not legitimate, in part because it was anti-religious. In 1983 both the White House and the State Department opened offices that were charged with publicizing this view and with shaping public opinion accordingly.⁹ The result of this bitter clash of viewpoints was not to clarify the complex religious and political situation in Nicaragua, but rather to distort it by casting it within rigid ideological categories. At the level of general public discourse the issue became a set of antithetical alternatives: one voice repeated the syllogism that since the Sandinista Revolution was Marxist-Leninist, it must be antireligious and therefore an enemy of the church; another proclaimed that because the Sandinistas not only tolerated but encouraged religious pluralism and freedom of worship, their revolution must be democratic. The former view collided harshly with the fact of broad religious liberty in Nicaragua. The latter view did not seem to account for the deep divisions over the revolution that afflicted the Christian churches within Nicaragua.

The conclusion to be drawn from these preliminary observations is that religion has played a vital and far-reaching role in the Nicaraguan Revolution, but the precise nature and significance of that role have not been explained adequately. Because Nicaragua has figured so prominently in U.S. foreign policy over the past decade, this important aspect of the Nicaraguan Revolution needs to be understood. Beyond the policy implications, there is the puzzle of religion’s influencing a process of revolution that is simultaneously shaped by Marxism. Is there not an unbridgeable gulf between Marxism and Christianity? To put the matter differently, can religion coexist with a Marxist revolution, and indeed influence that revolution across time according to its own values? Finally, can a revolution that professes adherence to the tenets of Marxism also be democratic? What sort of democratic revolution would it be and what influence, if any, would the religious factor have in making it democratic?

The central theme of this book is the interplay of religion and political revolution. The more closely we looked at the Nicaraguan Revolution, the more we became convinced that neither Cuba nor Mexico enabled us fully to understand the Nicaraguan case. Insofar as religion was concerned, these revolutions imitated the French Revolution: they were anticlerical, and they tended to view religious teachings and church practices as reactionary. In our search for more useful precedents, we were led to examine our own North American political heritage.

The results of our initial inquiries surprised and intrigued us, and so we have pursued them in the writing of this book. We became convinced that, from the standpoint of religion and its role in revolution, the English and American revolutions provide more interesting parallels to the Nicaraguan Revolution than do the French, Mexican, or Cuban revolutions. In both the English revolution of the 1640s and the American Revolution of the 1770s, religious belief was a strong catalyst to political action. When the layers of rhetoric are peeled away in the contemporary debate over Central America, the fusion of Christian motives with political struggle in the Nicaraguan Revolution reveals striking similarities to the English and American revolutions.

We do not say that the Nicaraguan Revolution is a copy of these two revolutions, any more than it is a copy of Cuba’s. However, our perspective may foster a more historically sensitive approach to the broad forces of change that are at work in Central America by elaborating on the historical antecedents to revolution in both halves of the Americas. It may also enable us to see what is truly new and different in the Nicaraguan experience. This book examines the dramatic changes in religious life that have taken place in Nicaragua over the past two decades, placing those changes within the dynamic framework of political revolution and counterrevolution that have made this tiny country so important and so fascinating.

Studying Religion and Revolution

Historically, the Latin American Catholic church was closely identified with the status quo and was apt to oppose any sort of revolutionary movement. Roman Catholicism was a formative and sustaining element of the traditional social order, as will be shown more fully in Chapter 3. In traditional societies religion typically played a key role in societal integration: it served to buttress established authority and to justify existing distributions of power, responsibility, and privilege. In the case of Latin America, Roman Catholicism fostered a tradition of ideas and values which are clearly antagonistic to various aspects of modernization. An integralist concept of a hierarchical society and a pronounced preference for authoritarian rule are prominent components of the Ibero-Catholic heritage.¹⁰

The conservative impact of Catholicism’s teachings was reinforced by its mode of ecclesiastical organization. Authority within the church was centralized and hierarchical. Moral guidance, and even salvation itself, were mediated through the teaching authority of the church and the dispensation of the sacraments. This system of church organization placed the believer in a position of extreme dependence upon the clergy.¹¹

Viewed from this vantage point Catholicism was correctly seen as an extremely influential conservative force in Western society, and certainly in Latin America. A number of excellent recent studies of the Catholic church in Latin America have accepted this basic point, but without accepting the corollary proposition that is easily and commonly drawn. Writers like Daniel H. Levine, Scott Mainwaring, and Brian H. Smith argue against the conclusion that an institutionalized religion such as Roman Catholicism can only be a conservative force that palliates the suffering of the masses and bolsters the domination of elites.¹² Their studies have shown that even as conservative a church as Roman Catholicism in Latin America can, under certain circumstances, become a source of renewal and innovation.

In this regard we have been as influenced as have the above-mentioned authors by the seminal work of Max Weber on religion and social change. We are particularly influenced by Weber’s characterization of the dynamic relationship between religious ideas and the social behavior of believers. Weber rejected Marx’s notion that religious ideas were merely a reflection of class interests, arguing instead that they had an autonomy of their own, and that they could stand in creative tension with individual or class interests.¹³ Weber’s concept of elective affinity is less deterministic than Marx’s historical materialism in that it allows for a more open-ended relationship between religious ideas and individual or group actions.

From time to time traditional religious systems spawn innovators who reemphasize or reformulate existing elements of the faith. This often takes the form of prophetic renewal: if the ideas of the prophet are elected by a mass of followers (because the mass of followers have an affinity with those ideas), then a potent convergence of belief and material interest can take place.¹⁴ In such instances religious beliefs become a source of social change. Explaining how and why material interests and religious beliefs converge is the task of the researcher, and the answers may be as varied as the settings where rebellion or revolution occur.

In the next two chapters we will examine the intertwining of religious and political revolutions in the political heritage of the Anglo-American tradition. We wish to show that the English and American experiences are instructive historical antecedents to the pattern of religious and political change seen in Central America today. A prophetic current set loose by the Reformation helped to instigate a strong demand for democratization in seventeenth-century England. Through the process of colonization this same religious current later helped to shape the social and political life of New England, culminating in the drive for American independence. In each of these settings changes in religious thought and action were carried along within, but also stimulated and strengthened, a wider movement for social change. The influence between the religious movement and the secular was reciprocal, each adding impetus to the other.

Consider the setting of the English revolution. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, English society was pervasively authoritarian, a fact reinforced by religious customs and teachings. The social order was rigid and static, although the forces of change were beginning to appear. Political authority was centralized and power was exercised by an aristocratic class—a landed elite that filled local offices and sent its own representatives to Parliament, where they governed in concert with the king. The Crown controlled the Church of England so that church, Crown, and aristocracy were mutually confirming authorities in a hierarchical world.

Mid-twentieth-century Central America bore a remarkable resemblance to the England of the 1640s. Political activity was the exclusive domain of a tiny minority consisting of a landed oligarchy, the military, and the urban middle class. Nicaragua varied from this pattern only in the degree to which a single family dominated the nation’s political life. Elections were elitist (and invariably fraudulent). The National Guard enforced electoral outcomes whether they reflected the popular will or not. The political system was authoritarian, and the distorting character of Somocismo merely exaggerated the profoundly antidemocratic character of Nicaraguan politics. The vast majority of Nicaraguans were poor, illiterate, and unorganized, and lacked the means to defend their interests.

Among the many factors that conspired to alter each of these societies, two stand out. First, economic change and disruption caused significant social dislocation, thus accentuating other grievances. Second, the struggle to rearticulate religious beliefs and practices, and to redistribute religious authority, helped to turn the society upside down.¹⁵ In Chapter 2 we will examine these factors at work in the English revolution, suggesting some of the ways in which the English experience foreshadows that of Nicaragua.

In Nicaragua, as elsewhere in Central America, the church also became a source of revolutionary thought and action because it momentarily recovered its prophetic tradition. This recovery generated deep religious change and sharp social conflict. From that religious change grew a demand for political liberation. It is much more likely that Nicaraguan peasants and shantytown dwellers fought in the insurrection and thought of themselves as Sandinistas because of religious conviction and hatred for Somocista despotism than because they had converted to Marxism. The vibrancy of religious life in posttriumph Nicaragua is testimony to this assertion.

But how are North American scholars, particularly ones socialized in a Protestant culture and reared in the Protestant faith, to approach the complex question of religious change in a Catholic country like Nicaragua? Early on in this joint venture we decided it was essential to speak with as many people as we could from all walks of life. The Nicaraguan process afforded the unusual opportunity to observe and analyze a revolution as it unfolded. Given the extreme underdevelopment of Nicaragua, there was relatively little documentary material from before the insurrection; therefore, despite the appearance of several excellent studies of the revolution soon after the triumph,¹⁶ we realized that to study the role played by religious actors we could not rely on documentary research alone. Our problem was compounded by the fact that much of our interest focused on change at the grass roots where few written records existed. The onset of the Contra war only made matters worse. Thus, for example, no complete inventory of Christian base communities (comunidades eclesiales de base, or CEBs), existed that would have enabled us to randomize a sample selection and formulate a questionnaire, the demographic and attitudinal responses to which could be tabulated and analyzed statistically. We never seriously entertained the possibility of survey research. Instead, over a period of nearly eight years we conducted hundreds of interviews that fall more properly within the domain of specialized interviewing wherein the researcher poses an initial question, which allows the respondent ample latitude to respond as he or she chooses. We did use a standardized set of questions for these interviews, with some modifications to accommodate Catholic or Protestant respondents. Wherever possible we have identified our respondents; in cases where we have not done so, we deemed it necessary to respect the respondent’s confidentiality.

As our research progressed, it became apparent to us that some voices were heard more than others. It was relatively easy to determine the views of the bishops’ conference on a broad range of issues—these were a matter of the public record. It was far more difficult to get a sense of what Christians at the grass roots thought in diverse regions of the country. Hence, we tried particularly to seek out persons and groups whose voice did not carry much beyond the borders of their barrio or village. This work represents a sustained effort to understand the motives of those who live at the margins of Nicaraguan society, and to place their actions within the larger context of the Nicaraguan Revolution.

We tried to enlarge upon our interviews by placing them within the social setting of the respondent’s community. Wherever possible we became participant observers. We attended meetings of CEBs throughout Nicaragua, and also meetings with leaders of CEB organizational networks in Managua, Estelí, Matagalpa, and Chinandega. We attended church services of the traditional Catholic churches in more privileged neighborhoods, as well as the more participatory services of the prophetic churches. Our research has also been informed by the differing styles and perspectives of La Hoja Dominical, the Sunday reflection that is printed by the archdiocese of Managua and represents the views of the traditional